This is my new alternative presentation from my original work for assignment 2 based upon my Tutors comments.

My Tutor commented on two images that he felt should have been composed in landscape to be consistent with my other images and he felt that the last image was weak in comparison the the rest. I have therefor re-shot to offer better alternatives.

The first was referring to my dog and this was the original portrait version.

This new version composed in landscape photographed in RAW and converted to black-and-white in Lightroom and tinted in Photoshop.

This next image Clive felt was weak.

Clive’s two objections were that again it has in portrait and he felt the colour was at odds with the black-and-white theme of the other images.

I can not re-do this picture to landscape as time has moved on and this bud has since flowered and gone. Furthermore, I was never one-hundred percent happy with it anyway, as I had struggled to come up with a better idea for an image. However, I have recently had a new idea that I like….

As you can see I have sketched out my idea of an image of myself suited and booted shaking hands with another suited and booted person whilst discreetly crossing my fingers. I want this image to denote a business meeting or interview and connoting a message of hope and optimism for the future. I set the camera up on a tripod, used one speedlight in a soft-box controlled remotely by Pocket wizards. The camera was set to manual and manual focus and tethered to my lap-top for picture control, I also used a separate Sekonic lightmeter to meter the flash.

D-800e, 24-120mm f/4 @ 120mm, 1/125 sec, f/6.3, ISO-125, flash used, daylight WB. Adjustments in Lightroom to black-and-white and colour tint adjustments made in Photoshop, Hue 257, Saturation 3. On reflection of this picture, I now consider that a second light would have been in order, set in front of me and to the left to help separate my right arm from the background. I could mess about in Photoshop to get better separation; but for this exercise I wont.

Using Clive’s suggested tinting I have produced new tinted versions of the rest of the black-and-white images. The originals are on the left and the new tinted versions on the right.

I went on holiday and had to wait until my return before I knew what he thought of my work and if I had to re-do any of it.

I was happy to learn that my assignment had been successful with only advisories that he suggested that I could do to improve the pictures.

I had complained that I could not obtain a true black-and-white with my Canon printer and that Canon was unable to help as they will always use the colours in the mix even for grey-scale only images; so Clive my Tutor has suggested that I deliberately add a colour cast similar in practice to Ansel Adams. Clive suggests using a slight blue purple hint to the images and advised that this could be achieved using the Black-and-White feature in the Layers and ticking tint and clicking on the tint box to bring up the colour menu. Type 257 as the value for Hue and 3% for saturation.

He also suggested some adjustments in Levels to improve the images.

Image 1# for example, Clive suggests that I darken the bottom left corner in order to prevent drawing the eye towards it.

This is my new version which I hope is closer to Clive’s idea.

This again needed more work, Clive notice a dark line at the top right of the image that I had missed and I wasn’t happy with the cross that I wanted in the image, it was too faint.

This is with the new adjustments made in Photoshop using the cloning tool and the dodge-and-burn tool.

This next image Clive suggested the shadow behind Sarah should be softened for better separation.

He is right of course and I think that this is a better version.

Image 4# was a little too dark.

This is the new adjustment.

This was not my favourite image and I have struggled to improve it as Clive suggests. I need more Photoshop experience.

Image 5# Clive complains that the composition is too tight with the edge of the box too close to the edge.

Unfortunately I do not have anther photo that offers more space and this would require reshooting; so all I can do is add the tint.

Image 6# Clive complained was too dark.

I hope that this is an improvement.

Adjustments made in Photoshop, Layers, Levels.

Image 7# This image Clive felt was okay.

I have just altered the tint.

Image 8# Clive suggested that the background was similar in tone to the hands.

This is my new version.

The last image that Clive critiqued was both for composition and exposure. My hand should be more central and the focus of the picture and my shoulder is too bright, so drawing the eye away from the subject.

My solution was to choose another image and make some adjustments in curves in Lightroom before finishing in Photoshop.